The phrase “holy grail of tone” shows up a lot in the mar­ket­ing of gui­tar gear, a promise of per­fec­tion that seems more than a lit­tle iron­ic. Per­fect “tone”—that neb­u­lous term used to describe the sound pro­duced by an ide­al com­bi­na­tion of instru­ment, effects, ampli­fi­er, and settings—is ever sought but nev­er seem­ing­ly found. Gui­tarists bick­er and advise on forums, and reli­gious­ly con­sult the gear guides of the pros, who often deign in mag­a­zines and videos to explain their own pecu­liar setups.

While more and more man­u­fac­tur­ers are promis­ing to recre­ate the tone of your favorite gui­tarist in dig­i­tal sim­u­la­tions, true tone-ophiles will nev­er accept any­thing less than the real thing. Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, a gui­tarist whose tone is unde­ni­ably all his own, has inspired a cot­tage indus­try of fan-made videos that teach you how to achieve “The David Gilmour Sound.” But there’s no sub­sti­tute for the source.

In the clip above from a BBC doc­u­men­tary, Gilmour vague­ly dis­cuss­es “the Floyd sound” and some of the tech­niques he uses to get his dis­tinc­tive gui­tar tone. Every dis­cus­sion of tone will include the admon­ish­ment that tone resides in the play­er’s fin­gers, not the gear. Gilmour sug­gests this ini­tial­ly. “It’s the tini­est lit­tle things,” he says, that “makes the gui­tar so per­son­al. Add a hun­dred dif­fer­ent tiny inflec­tions to what you’re doing all the time. That’s what gives peo­ple their indi­vid­ual tone.”

It’s a true enough state­ment, but there are still ways to get close to the sound of Gilmour’s gui­tar set­up, if not to actu­al­ly play exact­ly like him. You can buy the gear he’s used over the years, or some­thing approx­i­mat­ing it, any­way. You can learn a few of his tricks—the bluesy bends and slides we know so well from his emo­tive solos. But unless you have the lux­u­ry of play­ing the kinds of huge stages, with huge vol­ume, Gilmour plays, he says, you’ll nev­er quite get it. Small amps in small rooms sound too cramped and arti­fi­cial, he says.

And if you’re play­ing stages like that, you’ve prob­a­bly dis­cov­ered a holy grail of tone that’s all your own, and legions of fans are try­ing to sound like you.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Gilmour Play the Songs of Syd Bar­rett, with the Help of David Bowie & Richard Wright

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Ital­ian Street Musi­cian Plays Amaz­ing Cov­ers of Pink Floyd Songs, Right in Front of the Pan­theon in Rome

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Maybe there’s truth to the old joke about the 60s—“If you remem­ber it, you weren’t there”—but it’s hard to believe any­one could for­get see­ing Hen­drix. If you caught him in Stock­holm in 1969 how­ev­er and it some­how slipped your mind, you can relive it again for the first time in the well-pre­served, new­ly restored con­cert film above: a full hour of “elec­tric church music” from the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence.

The event was not meant to have been pre­served at all. As Cata­ri­na Wil­son of Sweden’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion SVT explained to the BBC, the tape should have been erased and reused because the sta­tion couldn’t afford to keep so much raw footage. Some tech­ni­cian at the sta­tion like­ly real­ized its val­ue and stashed it away. Since it was unla­beled, the footage sat for­got­ten on the shelf for 35 years, until a team under­took a project of trans­fer­ring archival mate­r­i­al to dig­i­tal and dis­cov­ered the full Hen­drix gig.

“The tape was shot on Jan­u­ary 9, 1969 at Stockholm’s Kon­serthuset,” reports Swedish news site The Local, “for a pop music show called ‘Num­mer 9.’ Only ten min­utes of the con­cert was broad­cast on Jan­u­ary 21st of that year.” After their intro­duc­tion, Hen­drix ded­i­cates the show to “the Amer­i­can desert­ers society”—soldiers refus­ing to go to Viet­nam, some of whom may have been in the audi­ence. Then, after a lit­tle tun­ing up and anoth­er obscure ded­i­ca­tion, the band launch­es into “Killing Floor.”

See the full track­list for the Stock­holm Kon­serthuset show below (the tape cuts off right before the encore).

01 Killing Floor
02 Span­ish Cas­tle Mag­ic
03 Fire 04 Hey Joe
05 Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
06 Red House
07 Sun­shine Of Your Love

Hen­drix also men­tions that the band will only play “oldies but bad­dies,” hint­ing at one of the many ten­sions between him and bassist Noel Red­ding that broke the band apart just six months lat­er. “The audi­ence want­ed us to play the old Hen­drix stan­dards,” Red­ding told Rolling Stone in Novem­ber, “but Jimi want­ed to do his new stuff. The last straw came at the Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val when Jimi told a reporter that he was going to enlarge the band… with­out even con­sult­ing myself or our drum­mer, Mitch Mitchell.”

Com­pared to this sure­ly mem­o­rable, yet fair­ly stan­dard Stock­holm con­cert, the Experience’s last stage appear­ance in Den­ver “end­ed up being an unfor­get­table show,” notes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “for all the wrong reasons”—containing all the things we asso­ciate with the chaot­ic late six­ties. Hen­drix dropped acid before the gig. “Com­bined with the near-riot that took place out­side of the venue by those who demand­ed that the pro­mot­ers make the event free, it made for a bad vibe over­all.”

You can hear that con­cert above, includ­ing Hendrix’s dec­la­ra­tion, mid-way through the set, that it would be “the last gig we’ll ever play togeth­er.” Just a few min­utes lat­er, police fired tear gas into the crowd, the wind blew it back toward the stage, and “the Expe­ri­ence set down their instru­ments for the final time and fled for cov­er.” Red­ding quit that night and board­ed a plane for Lon­don, and just over a year lat­er, Hen­drix was gone.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence (Feb­ru­ary, 1967)

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

Hear a Great 4‑Hour Radio Doc­u­men­tary on the Life & Music of Jimi Hen­drix: Fea­tures Rare Record­ings & Inter­views

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness.

First of all, hap­py belat­ed birth­day to Evan Puschak, the man behind Nerd­writer and some of the best video essays on the web that we often fea­ture here on Open Cul­ture. He recent­ly turned 30, and if you’re in your 20s that’s some elder states­man busi­ness. If you’re old­er, well, remem­ber how you felt when you turned 30? Wouldn’t you want that youth­ful anx­i­ety back?

Any­way, Evan’s gift to us is this appre­ci­a­tion of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” the break­away hit from his 1979 album Off the Wall, the one that began Jackson’s rise into the stratos­phere, a jour­ney that would end with an iso­lat­ed man chas­ing the dragon’s tail of suc­cess. But that was far off in the future, and though Thriller was the block­buster album, Off the Wall has so much more joy, sex­u­al­i­ty, and heart than what was to come. “Rock with You” and the title track are smooth, soul­ful num­bers, but as Puschak says, “Don’t Stop” is *the* sin­gle off that album, a song that still sounds fresh today, a cross-over pop hit par excel­lence, despite being over­played at every wed­ding recep­tion since the ‘80s. (Even when watch­ing the video for this piece, I found myself clap­ping along, some­thing I rarely do. But it’s just so. damn. catchy.)

So why is that? How does this song work?

Puschak makes a few salient points.

One is that the song comes heav­i­ly indebt­ed to dis­co, yet it is not a dis­co song. The rhythm struc­ture is clos­er to funk than disco–it’s real­ly just a vamp on two chords–and the verse-cho­rus struc­ture is from rock music. It’s “pure dance music,” as Puschak says, quot­ing writer Ann Daniel­son.

Anoth­er point is that the rhythm mix is all about syn­co­pa­tion, with bass, shak­ers, strings, horns, and even a Coke bot­tle (played by Jack­son him­self) fill­ing in the spaces between the beat. (Those that find, say, house music bor­ing can put a lot of it down to the lack of syn­co­pa­tion).

And final­ly, there’s Jackson’s vocals, the top of each verse being two notes in a tri­tone inter­val. The tri­tone has been called the “devil’s inter­val”–there’s a nice video essay here on its his­to­ry–but there’s noth­ing dev­il­ish about Jackson’s falset­to. As Puschak says, quot­ing Ethan Hein, “the rela­tion­ship between these notes is some­what off kil­ter, and your mind notices that. And that infus­es the song with an urgency that it wouldn’t oth­er­wise have.”

Inter­est­ing­ly, the lyrics are not dis­cussed. And prob­a­bly for good reason–apart from the song’s title in the cho­rus, Jackson’s lyrics are sung so high they are inscrutable. Be hon­est, until you read the lyric sheet, did you know what he was singing? My point would be–it doesn’t mat­ter. The point is in the title; the mean­ing is in the mood.

Jack­son would try to catch light­ing in a bot­tle again on Thriller with “You Wan­na Be Startin’ Some­thing,” a pret­ty bla­tant rewrite. It’s still a great sin­gle, but that song, along with “Beat It” start­ed Jack­son along the path of lry­ics about aggres­sion and pos­tur­ing. (A few years lat­er, we’d have “Bad,” “Smooth Crim­i­nal,” and more.)

Hence my point about the mag­ic of Off the Wall–before the fame, before the insan­i­ty, before the “King of Pop” busi­ness, Jack­son was a sen­su­al, androg­y­nous angel sent down to bring love to the dance floor, or your bed­room, and all spaces in between. It didn’t last long, but it’s a beau­ti­ful sin­gle, a beau­ti­ful album, and a beau­ti­ful moment in pop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear “Starlight,” Michael Jackson’s Ear­ly Demo of “Thriller”: A Ver­sion Before the Lyrics Were Rad­i­cal­ly Changed

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

Miles Davis Cov­ers Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” (1983)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Peo­ple lose their reli­gion all the time. It hap­pens in all sorts of ways. And R.E.M.’s 1991 song “Los­ing My Reli­gion” has spo­ken to so many in the midst of these expe­ri­ences that we might won­der if singer/songwriter Michael Stipe had a sim­i­lar life change when he wrote those lyrics. Not so much, he says above in an inter­view with Dutch sta­tion Top 2000 a gogo. “What the song is about has noth­ing to with reli­gion,” he says.

The lyric comes from an old South­ern col­lo­qui­al­ism mean­ing that some­thing so upset­ting has hap­pened “that you might lose your reli­gion.” Stipe used that old-time notion as a metaphor for unre­quit­ed love, a dif­fer­ent kind of faith, one he describes in painful­ly ten­ta­tive terms: “hold­ing back, then reach­ing for­ward, then pulling back again, then reach­ing for­ward again.”

He explains anoth­er of the song’s ambi­gu­i­ties hid­den with­in the ellip­ti­cal lyrics: “You don’t ever real­ly know if the per­son that I’m reach­ing out for is aware of me, if they even know that I exist.” It’s the heady tur­moil of a roman­tic crush raised to the heights of saint­ly suf­fer­ing. A brood­ing, alt-rock ver­sion of love songs like “Earth Angel.” Giv­en the role of devo­tion in so much reli­gious prac­tice, there’s no rea­son the song can’t still be about los­ing one’s reli­gion for lis­ten­ers, but now we know what Stipe him­self had in mind.

Some oth­er fun facts we learn about this huge hit: Stipe record­ed the song almost naked and kind of pissed-off—he had pushed to deliv­er his vocals in one emo­tion­al take, but the stu­dio engi­neer seemed half-asleep. And his awk­ward, angu­lar dance in the oh-so-90s video direct­ed by Tarsem Singh, above? He pulled his inspi­ra­tion from Sinead O’Connor’s St. Vitus dance in 1990s’ “The Emperor’s New Clothes” video and—no surprise—from David Byrne’s “riv­et­ing” herky-jerky moves.

While the record com­pa­ny saw the song’s mass appeal, bassist Mike Mills express­es his ini­tial sur­prise at their choice of “Los­ing My Reli­gion” as Out of Time’s first sin­gle: “That’s a great idea. It makes no sense at all, it’s 5 min­utes long, it has no cho­rus, and a man­dolin is the lead instru­ment. It’s per­fect for R.E.M. because it flouts all the rules.” This peri­od saw the band fur­ther devel­op­ing its moody down­beat folk side, yet the album that pro­duced this song also gave us “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple,” the pop­pi­est, most upbeat song R.E.M.—and maybe any band—had ever record­ed, a true tes­ta­ment to their emo­tion­al range.

The fol­low­ing year, Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple came out, draw­ing on mate­r­i­al writ­ten dur­ing the Out of Time ses­sions and again fea­tur­ing two sin­gles that vast­ly con­trast­ed in tone, maudlin tear­jerk­er “Every­body Hurts” and the cel­e­bra­to­ry Andy Kauf­man trib­ute “Man on the Moon.” Anoth­er song from that album that didn’t get as much atten­tion, “Try Not to Breath,” hear­kens back to a much ear­li­er R.E.M. folk song, the Civ­il War-themed “Swan Swan H” from Life’s Rich Pageant.

As we hear the band explain above in an episode of Song Exploder, the song began its life on a Civ­il War-era instru­ment, the dul­cimer. Then its son­ic influ­ences expand­ed to include two of Peter Buck­’s favorite musi­cal gen­res, surf rock and spaghet­ti west­ern. The episode con­tains many more fas­ci­nat­ing insid­er insights from R.E.M. about “Try Not to Breathe,” which may be one of the sad­dest songs they’ve ever writ­ten, a song about choos­ing to die rather than suf­fer.

Hear the song’s orig­i­nal demo and ref­er­ences to Blade Run­ner, get a glimpse into Stipe’s visu­al song­writ­ing process, and learn the very per­son­al inspi­ra­tion from his fam­i­ly his­to­ry for lyrics like “baby don’t shiv­er now, why do you shiv­er now?” Unlike “Los­ing My Reli­gion,” this song does, in some ways, pull musi­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly from Stipe’s reli­gious back­ground.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness